Our History

PRW started in 1984 when Lynn Price was Chair of the Salt Lake County Republican Party.

At the time, there was a big push by many liberal Democrats for support of the Equal Rights Amendment. We were opposed to the ERA.

Frequent comments in the newspapers indicated that “No thinking woman would be a Republican!”

In that climate, Mary Callaghan, the elected party secretary, commented that maybe we needed to make Republican women more visible. The idea was put forth for a professional women’s organization to counter the claim that thinking women would choose to not be Republican.

A handful of involved female professional and politically involved women were invited to participate in discussions and in organizing PRW.

Our goal was to help make Republican women more visible, give them a forum for speaking out on pertinent issues, get even more women involved and help them become more knowledgeable about the political process and help them become viable candidates.

We did not want to become a tool of the Party, but, rather, be a means of keeping the Party and our elected Representatives tuned into issues we thought were/are important.

You can see from the list of former and current PRW presidents, that PRW has been led by very qualified and influential women.

April 1984 – April 1986 Georgia Peterson (former Utah legislator)

April 1986 – April 1987 Suzanne Bradford (wife of a Utah legislator)

April 1987 – April 1988 Olene Walker, Ph.D. (former legislator and former governor)